This is a survey of some of the principal developments in proof theory from its inception in the 1920s, at the hands of David Hilbert, up to the 1960s. Hilbert's aim was to use this as a tool in his nitary consistency program to eliminate the \actual in nite " in mathematics from proofs of purely nitary statements. One of the main approaches that turned out to be the most useful in pursuit of this program was that due to Gerhard Gentzen, in the 1930s, via his calculi of \sequents" and his Cut-Elimination Theorem for them. Following that we trace how and why prima facie in nitary concepts, such as ordinals, and in nitary methods, such as the use of in nitely long proofs, gradually came to dominate proof-theoretical developments. In this rst lecture I will give anoverview of the developments in proof theory since Hilbert's initiative in establishing the subject in the 1920s. For this purpose I am following the rst part of a series of expository lectures that I gave for the Logic Colloquium `94 held in Clermont-Ferrand 21-23 July 1994, but haven't published. The theme of my lectures there was that although Hilbert established his theory of proofs as a part of his foundational program and, for philosophical reasons whichwe shall get into, aimed to have it developed in a completely nitistic way, the actual work in proof theory This is the rst of three lectures that I delivered at the conference, Proof Theory: History

In this paper we develop mathematically strong systems of analysis in higher types which, nevertheless, are proof-theoretically weak, i.e. conservative over elementary resp. primitive recursive arithmetic. These systems are based on non-collapsing hierarchies ( n -WKL+ ; n -WKL+ ) of principles which generalize (and for n = 0 coincide with) the so-called `weak' Konig's lemma WKL (which has been studied extensively in the context of second order arithmetic) to logically more complex tree predicates. Whereas the second order context used in the program of reverse mathematics requires an encoding of higher analytical concepts like continuous functions F : X ! Y between Polish spaces X;Y , the more exible language of our systems allows to treat such objects directly. This is of relevance as the encoding of F used in reverse mathematics tacitly yields a constructively enriched notion of continuous functions which e.g. for F : IN ! IN can be seen (in our higher order context) Basic Research in Computer Science, Centre of the Danish National Research Foundation.

1. INTRODUCTION. For geometers, Hilbert’s influential work on the foundations of geometry is important. For analysts, Hilbert’s theory of integral equations is just as important. But the address “Mathematische Probleme ” [37] that David Hilbert (1862– 1943) delivered at the second International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Paris has tremendous importance for all mathematicians. Moreover, a substantial part of

ion in itself is not the goal: for Whitehead [117]"it is the large generalisation, limited by a happy particularity, which is the fruitful conception." As an example consider the theorem in ring theory, which states that if R is a ring, f(x) is a polynomial over R and f(r) = 0 for every element of r of R then R is commutative. Special cases of this, for example f(x) is x 2 \Gamma x or x 3 \Gamma x, can be given a first order proof in a few lines of symbol manipulation. The usual proof of the general result [20] (which takes a semester's postgraduate course to develop from scratch) is a corollary of other results: we prove that rings satisfying the condition are semi-simple artinian, apply a theorem which shows that all such rings are matrix rings over division rings, and eventually obtain the result by showing that all finite division rings are fields, and hence commutative. This displays von Neumann's architectural qualities: it is "deep" in a way in which the symbol manipulati...

We discuss the development of metamathematics in the Hilbert school, and Hilbert's proof-theoretic program in particular. We place this program in a broader historical and philosophical context, especially with respect to nineteenth century developments in mathematics and logic. Finally, we show how these considerations help frame our understanding of metamathematics and proof theory today.

this paper, a tree T = (V,) is a partial ordering with a minimum element, where V is finite, and the ancestors of any x V are linearly ordered under . The minimum element of T is called the root of T, and is written r(T). A tree is said to be trivial if and only if it has exactly one vertex, which must be its root. V = V(T) represents the set of all vertices of the tree T = (V,). In a tree T, if x < y and for no z is x < z < y, then we say that y is a child of x and x is the parent of y. Every vertex has at most one parent. However, vertices may have zero or more children. We write p(x,T) for the parent of x in T. We use Ch(T) = V(T)\{r(T)} for the set of all children of T. We write T 1 T 2 if and only if i) r(T 1 ) = r(T 2 ); ii) for all x Ch(T 1 ), p(x,T 1 ) = p(x,T 2 ). This is a partial ordering on trees. Note that if T 1 T 2

It is well-known by now that large parts of (non-constructive) mathematical reasoning can be carried out in systems T which are conservative over primitive recursive arithmetic PRA (and even much weaker systems). On the other hand there are principles S of elementary analysis (like the Bolzano-Weierstra principle, the existence of a limit superior for bounded sequences etc.) which are known to be equivalent to arithmetical comprehension (relative to T ) and therefore go far beyond the strength of PRA (when added to T ). In this paper

investigating the strength of set existence axioms needed for separable Banach space theory. We show that the separation theorem foropenconvexsetsisequivalenttoWKL0 over RCA0. Weshow that the separation theorem for separably closed convex sets is equivalent to ACA0 over RCA0. Our strategy for proving these geometrical Hahn–Banach theorems is to reduce to the finite-dimensional case by means of a compactness argument. 1.

Hilbert’s program is, in the first instance, a proposal and a research program in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics. It was formulated in the early 1920s by German mathematician David Hilbert (1862–1943), and was pursued by him and his collaborators at the University of Göttingen and elsewhere in the 1920s

Let I# 1 be the fragment of elementary Peano Arithmetic in which induction is restricted to #1-formulas. More than three decades ago, Charles Parsons showed that the provably total functions of I# 1 are exactly the primitive recursive functions. In this paper, we observe that Parsons' result is a consequence of Herbrand's theorem concerning the of universal theories. We give a self-contained proof requiring only basic knowledge of mathematical logic.